"Absurd!" says Mr. Dare, in an impossible tone.
"Yes, painfully absurd! Quite too ridiculous," with unpleasant force.
"Oh!" says Mr. Dare.
"Yes," says Dulce, still defiant, though a little ashamed of herself, "it is quite enough to make people hate people, all this perpetual gossip."
"You are at least honest," he says, bitterly.
Silence.
Dulce, whose tempers are always short-lived, after a little reflection grows very repentant.
Turning to him, she lays her little hand on his, as it still rests on the arm of her chair, and says, softly:
"I have been cross to you. Forgive me. I did not quite mean it. Tell me again what you want me to do about your friend."
"It was only a little matter," says Roger, in a low tone, "and it was, I think, the first favor I ever asked of you; and I thought, perhaps – "
He pauses. And raising himself from his lounging position, on her chair, moves as though he would go away from her, having abandoned all hope of having his request acceded to.
But as he turns from her, her fingers tighten upon his, and so she detains him.
"What is it now?" he asks, coldly, trying to keep up his dignity, but as his glance meets hers, he melts. And, in truth, just now she could have thawed a much harder heart, for on her mignon face sits one of her very loveliest smiles, conjured up for Roger's special benefit.
"Don't go away," she entreats, prettily, "and listen to me. I shall be charming to your friend. I shall devote myself exclusively to him if it will please you; and if only to prove to you that I can grant you a favor."
"Thank you," says Roger gratefully. Then he regards her meditatively for a moment, and then says, slowly:
"Don't be too kind to him."
"Could I?" says Dulce, naively.
He laughs a little, and, bending his head, presses his lips to the little slender hand that still rests within his own.
The caress is so unusual that Dulce glances at him curiously from under her long lashes. A faint, pink glow creeps into her cheeks. She is surprised; perhaps, too, a little pleased, because once again this evening she bestows upon him a smile, soft and radiant.
Mr. Browne is rambling on in some incoherent fashion to Julia Beaufort. Sir Mark is telling Portia some quaint little stories. Fabian is silently listening to them stretched at Portia's feet.
The last glimpse of day has gone. "Death's twin sister, Sleep," has fallen upon the earth. One by one the sweet stars come out in the dusky vault above, "spirit-like, infinite."
In amongst the firs that stand close together in a huge clump at the end of the lawn, great shadows are lying, that stretching ever and ever further, form at last a link between the land and the sea.
"Ah! here you are, Stephen," says Sir Mark, addressing the languid young man they had met in the morning, who is coming to them across the grass. "Why didn't you come sooner?"
"They wouldn't give me any dinner until about an hour ago," says the languid young man in a subdued voice. He glances from Portia to Julia Beaufort, and then to Dulce. There his glance rests. It is evident he has found what he seeks.
"Dulce, I think I told you Stephen Gower was coming to-night," says Roger, simply. And then Dulce rises and rustles up to him, and filled with the determination to keep sacred her promise to be particularly nice to Roger's friend, holds out to him a very friendly hand, and makes him warmly welcome.
Then Portia makes him a little bow, and Julia simpers at him, and presently he finds himself accepted by and admitted to the bosom of the family, which, indeed, is a rather nondescript one. After a few moments of unavoidable hesitation, he throws himself at Dulce's feet, and, leaning on his elbow, tells himself country life, after all, isn't half a bad thing.
"What a heavenly night it is," says Dulce, smiling down on him, still bent on fulfilling her word to Roger. Perhaps she is hardly aware how encouraging her smile can be. "See the ocean down there," pointing with a rounded, soft, bare arm, that gleams like snow in the moonlight, to where the sea is shining between the trees. "How near it seems, though we know it is quite far away."
"It is nearer to you than I am," says Mr. Gower, in a tone that might imply the idea that he thinks the ocean in better care than himself.
"Well, not just now," says Dulce, laughing.
"Not just now," returns he, echoing her laugh. "I suppose we should be thankful for small mercies; but I wish the Fens was a little nearer to this place than it is."
"Portia, can you see Inca's Cliff from this?" asks Dulce, looking at her cousin. "You remember the spot where we saw the little blue flowers yesterday, that you so coveted. How clearly it stands out now beneath the moonbeams."
"Like burnished silver," says Portia, dreamily, always with a lazy motion wafting her black fan to and fro. "And those flowers – how I longed for them, principally, I suppose, because they were beyond my reach."
"Where are they," asks Roger. "I never remember seeing blue flowers there."
"Oh! you wouldn't notice them," says his fiancée, a fine touch of petulance in her tone, that makes Gower lift his head to look at her; "but they were there nevertheless. They were the very color of the Alpine gentian, and so pretty. We quite fell in love with them, Portia and I, Portia especially; but we could not get at them, they were so low down."
"There was a tiny ledge we might have stood on," says Portia, "but our courage failed us, and we would not try it."
"And quite right, too," says Sir Mark. "I detest people who climb precipices and descend cliffs. It makes my blood run cold."
"Then what made you climb all those Swiss mountains, two years ago?" asks Julia Beaufort, who has a talent for saying the wrong thing, and who has quite forgotten the love affair that drove Sir Mark abroad at that time.
"I don't know," replies he, calmly; "I never shall, I suppose. I perfectly hated it all the while, especially the guides, who were more like assassins than anything else. I think they hated me, too, and would have given anything to pitch me over some of the passes."
Portia laughs.
"I can sympathize with you," she says. "Danger of any sort has no charm for me. Yet I wanted those flowers. I think" – idly – "I shall always want them, simply because I can't get them."
"You shall have them in three seconds if you will only say the word," says Dicky Browne, who is all but fast asleep, and who looks quite as like descending a rugged cliff as Portia herself.
"I am so glad I don't know the 'word,'" says Portia, with a little grimace. "It would be a pity to endanger a valuable life like yours."
Dulce turns to Mr. Gower.
"You may smoke if you like," she says, sweetly. "I know you are longing for a cigarette or something, and we don't mind."
"Really though?" says Gower.
"Yes, really. Even our pretty town-lady here," indicating Portia, "likes the perfume in the open air."
"Very much indeed," says Portia, graciously, leaning a little toward Gower, and smiling sweetly.
"A moment ago I told myself I could not be happier," says Stephen, glancing at Dulce. "And indeed I wanted nothing further – but if I may smoke – if I have your permission to light this," producing a cigar, "I shall feel that my end is near; I shall know that the gods love me, and that therefore I must die young."
As he places the cigar between his lips he leans back again at Dulce's feet with a sigh suggestive of unutterable bliss.
"We were talking about you just before you came," says Dulce, with a little friendly nod, bending over his recumbent form, and making him a present of a very adorable smile. "We had all, you know, formed such different opinions about you."
"What was your opinion," asks he, rising to a sitting